


you who made me laugh again

by bittereternity



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Based on the finale promo, Episode Tag, F/M, Introspection, Mentions of blood and gore, Post-Releves, because this pairing is perfection, making up for lack of bev last episode, moment between episodes, post-episode, pre-finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Orange doesn't suit you," she remarks as she slides into the seat opposite him.  They used to be on the same side of the glass, once. </p><p>Or, Beverly comes to see Will when he's held for questioning after his arrest.  A moment that might change the course of Will's quest to prove his innocence.  (based on the promo for 1x13 - Savoureux)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you who made me laugh again

*

Your face seems kind. But your eyes – they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.

Charles Bukowski, _Women_

*

“Orange isn’t the best color on you,” Beverly remarks as she slides into the seat opposite him. The metal underneath her is ruthless in its frigidity. She presses her feet together under the table and doesn’t flinch.

Will squints at her and his mouth twists. It may be a smile, she can’t be sure, but there’s no time for pleasantries here.

“Are you here to question me?” he wants to know.

She leans forward, clasps her hands together on the table. From an angle, it looks like she could be praying. Will’s breathing is harsh against the hollow silence of the room and she can feel his eyes on him, focused and bright and just on the other side of desperate.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing here.

“Jack doesn’t know I’m here.” It’s the closest thing to an answer she can give him.

Will smiles, crooked and sharp at the same time. His eyes squint against the sole light in the room – meant to intimidate a suspect into a confession, she knows – when he looks at her,

“That’s not what I asked,” his voice is gentle, like he’s allowing her to win the first round.

She draws her hands back and places them carefully on her thighs. “Did you kill Abigail?” she asks him in return. She doesn’t want to know the answer to that, not really, but she’s always thought it best to get everything out in the open.

Will looks at her sharply and she can tell he hasn’t been expecting this. “There’s blood on my hands,” his reply is weary and monotonous. He keeps looking at a point beyond her as if he’s afraid of looking at anything more concrete.

She allows herself a half-smile, and feels a knot in her chest loosen minutely. “That’s not what I asked,” she reminds him.

Will’s breathing steadies itself just a fraction. “I have blood on my hands,” he tells her in a hushed whisper. “Every time I look at them, that’s all I see. I can _smell_ it too, the smell of dried blood and decay.” He halts abruptly to look at her, all wide-eyed and flushed cheeks and dilated pupils.

“Can you see the blood too?”  His eyes plead with her for an answer.

She hesitates, but only for a second. There is nothing on his hands, but the silence stretches between them over the cool metal of the table.

He is the one who breaks first. Always the gallant one, thinking he can _save_ everybody but himself.

“Orange doesn’t suit me, huh?” he gives her a weak smile and the silence breaks, shatters into the abyss.

She smiles too; it’s the least she can do. “Orange doesn’t suit you,” she agrees.

*

A lifetime ago, she wanted to be a ballerina.

It was all about the precision in the act, for her. There was nothing she wanted more than the ability to simultaneously weave tales of uniform complexity, to leave behind her a trail of exquisite motions with timelessly executed agility (that she always had), an unforgiving sharpness (that she would spend years cultivating) and a story of heartbreak in her movement (that – well.)

Twenty years later and she’s learnt to love the precise execution of a murder weapon, the trail of clues left behind every person thinking they’ve just finished the perfect crime. She weaves herself seamlessly in and out of cases, the wonders of forensics at her feet and autopsy reports and resolutions in the palm of her hand. This is what she has learnt to understand: the story behind every speck of blood at the crime scene, the heartbreak wedged neatly in between C4 and C5, and the resignation on the victim’s face just as rigor mortis set in.

Standing in her white coat and gloved hands and with her evidence, she's never felt like more of a ballerina than everyday at work. Look into her eyes and tell her she isn't, I dare you. 

*

Will feels far away although he isn’t speaking, although there’s still just a table – barely standing still on its own four feet – between them.

“You must be tired,” he remarks finally without any heart behind the words. In fact, he looks pained at the prospect of speaking in general, but he does it for her, _god_ he does it for her.

Beverly’s shoulders slump a little. “I’m fine,” she almost says, but he’s very good, he’s the face of this job for a reason.

“You, on the other hand, look like epitome of freshness and sunshine,” she snipes back. It’s not even remotely her best but she blames it on too much coffee and too little sleep.

 _Too much Will_ , and this is something else she doesn’t think about.

Will sighs. Something twists in his voice and she feels a rush of _something_ that makes her want to reach out and smooth that patch of hair on his forehead.

“ _What_ are you doing here, Bev?” The words don’t sound like a question when they fall from his lips.

She clenches her fingers together on her thigh until they hurt. Her palm will have crescents edged on them later, she’s sure.

“We used to have things to talk about before.” The words are out before she has the foresight to stop them.

Will looks down. “We used to have a lot of things before,” he replies quietly, and she thinks that maybe he means it to hurt, but it does nothing to intensify the dull ache already within her bones.

She wants nothing more than to get out then, to remind herself of how it feels like to _breathe_.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” she tells him even as she doesn’t know why she _bothers_ in the first place.

Will yanks against the steel handcuffing him to the table, merely to make a point.

“I’ll be right here,” he calls after her back.

*

This, she remembers:

Her love fills around the blanks between her interactions with Will, she pours herself into feeling, tasting the crevices of silence around their shadows.

She remembers—

\-- Will’s hands on her own, his thumb grazing lightly over her pulse, carefully balanced over the line between friendly and just a little bit more. Her hands on his shoulders and his stance converting into _relaxed,_ falling into trust and compliance under the pressure of her palms. His forefinger on her cheek, tracing the trajectory of a tear she will _not let fall,_ dammit, except look at the girl lying there dead with her eyes plucked out and her fingers mutilated. Her thighs barely touching his on the way back from a crime scene and they both pretend that his whole body isn’t trembling, they both pretend that her touch doesn’t slow his heartbeat gradually and makes him feel stable, whole again --

She remembers--

\--standing behind the glass and watching Jack pull a confession out of a suspect, profiling his marriage through the wrinkles on his tie, teasing Brian about his disastrous attempts at dating and a non-existent girlfriend, and if Will's shoulder brushes against hers, well these interrogation rooms are cramped, obviously it’s nothing more than a lack of space and too many people, you do the math really --

They had both been on the same side, once.

*

She falls asleep almost as soon as her head hits her office chair. She barely has time to set an alarm – fifty five minutes, volume set on _loud_ – before her eyes droop shut. Maybe she had been more tired than she’d let on, maybe Will had been right, after all.

(Will was always right, she thinks, and corrects herself frantically. _Will is, Will is, Will is,_ she chants in her head like a mantra.)

The next moment, she’s kneeling beside Abigail’s body, her hands cold and bloodless and clasped over her chest, a final act of respect going in her favor. She bends down to locate the source of her bleeding when a shadow casts over them.

She looks up to see Will looming over her, hands stuffed in his pockets. She frowns, there’s something about his expression that doesn’t sit right with her.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” he tells her calmly, but there’s a note of panic in his voice she can’t overlook.

“It’s Abigail Hobbs,” she informs him uselessly.

Will shakes his head vigorously and shuffles his feet on the ground. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he repeats to himself, murmurs it over and over again to the frayed stitches on his jeans.

Beverly straightens, turns back to face him. “Will,” she begins, but he’s faster.

She sees the barrel of the gun pointed at her before she even registers that his hand is out of his pocket.

“ _Will_ ,” she breathes out, not because she’s genuinely afraid for her life, but because he’s managed to _surprise_ her again, dammit.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he repeats again, and his voice shakes desperately, just like the gun in his hand trembles like a leaf in the wind.

“Will, what did you do?” she asks him slowly, carefully. He releases the safety and uses his other hand in a futile attempt to steady the gun.

“What did you _do_?” her voice is urgent now, and even without looking, she can _feel_ his thumb on the trigger, reddening just barely under the pressure, and any second now, any second –

But that isn’t what catches her attention.

It’s his _eyes._ His eyes are wide and red-rimmed and she sees herself reflected in them, she sees his pupils flecked with parts of her own self, she sees his eyes softening, mellowed out at the corners, looking at her with a world full of desperation and alacrity, pleading with her to _understand,_ because if someone is allowed to see behind his eyes, it will be her, dammit, she will _make_ sure it’s her.

\--any second now, his thumb will press the trigger and there will be a bullet zooming towards her at million miles per hour and she will be powerless, can do nothing but _look_ –

She wakes up with a crick in her neck to an empty office.

(She remembers this: the look in Will’s eyes begging her to understand; think, think, think, _understand_ ).

She wakes up with sweat trickling down the back of her neck and thinks:  _love._

 _oh, Will_ , she smiles.

*

She goes back to the interrogation room at the fifty-ninth minute mark.

“You did not kill Abigail Hobbs,” she says without preamble. It’s not a question, do note.

Will looks startled, she notes with slight triumph. “Only her?” he frowns.

She takes a deep breath and lays all the cards down the table. It’s still standing, still cold and harsh metal. “You didn’t kill any of them.”

She holds her breath and watches him closely. That was her endgame, right there, and it all depends on his response.

Something in her chest dissolves and she feels incredibly _light_ for a second when he replies with _how do you know_ instead of _do you have proof._

“I don’t know,” she replies, simply.

The frown on his forehead deepens. “You don’t know?” his repetition is a question.

She takes another breath. “I believe,” she tells him simply, looks him straight in the eyes and tries to let him know all that she won’t say out loud: that she’s laying her foundation down at his feet.

Will understands. He’s _very_ good, after all.

And there’s that look in his eyes again, that look conveying wonder and gratitude and affection and addiction and a plethora of other, more dangerous things she won’t let herself identify.

“You believe,” he repeats lightly, in wonderment.

There’s a slight smile on his face that she _knows_ is mirrored on her own. _Look at that,_ he does not say, but she echoes it nonetheless.

Look. At. That.

*

For the record, it isn’t just a deep-seated conviction. She’s always had a sense of loathing buried deep inside her for people who _believed_ without any proof, believed convicts and serial killers and psychopaths and overlooked the facts.

Will Graham is not a murderer.

Fact.

Will Graham did not kill, period.

(she’s a woman of logic: what does she have to call her own if not facts, cold and true and unforgiving?)

She knows that Will did not murder anyone.

Fact.

(she knows that Will is _capable_ of murder, too, but one step, one step at a time.)

She may be a little in love with him, herself.

Fa—

*

She has a key in her hand. Will is looking at her across the table like he can’t quite believe what she’s doing.

It makes her want to reach out, consequences be damned, and kiss him until his lips are so swollen that he can’t speak. But there still remains a table between them, devoid of anything but still carrying the weights of all their silences.

“I’m going to uncuff you and remember that I have unfinished work back at the lab,” she dictates in a detached voice, carefully orchestrated to stop herself from _shaking_.

“Jack will come to interrogate you in an hour. I will be very surprised when I find that you’re not here, because I haven’t been in the cell with you before,” she finishes.

Will turns his head to cough. She frowns, mostly because it sounds suspiciously like subdued laughter.

“Do you think I can do this?” he asks her out of nowhere, allows her to see the gaping vulnerability in his mind.

Her eyes soften. “The evidence is always there,” she quotes back at him in a soothing voice until she sees the panic behind his eyes rest again.

“Orange doesn’t suit me,” he murmurs, and under the table, she feels one of his legs brushing lightly against her own.

Her heart feels like it’s going to burst, like she’s cheering on the underdog at a baseball game, like she is _feeling_ so much that parts of her will be scattered on the floor very soon, like hers is the shot that will end a war.

She allows herself to look at him openly, affectionately, just for a second. “Orange doesn’t suit you,” she agrees.

*

In between, this happens:

“How long?” she asks him over the table stretching between them. It is cold, cruel and the table demands an inherent verity, demands the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

She wields her question over him like a sword pointing in several directions all at once. There are many ways he can interpret this, but this is Will and he knows, _boy_ does he know.

 _How long have you been in love with me_ is what she does not say.

“ _Bev_ ,” Will’s voice is a whisper like her name is sacred, like being able to say it is a privilege in itself.

“Bev,” he laughs, sharp and short and _true_. “That first day, you walked in and I…”

His voice washes over her and trails off.

*


End file.
